Companies brace for staff churn

38pc of workers want new job

AUSTRALIAN employers are bracing for an exodus of staff early next year as workers take advantage of a tight labour market to switch jobs or demand extended leave breaks overseas.

Market watchers say that the Great Resignation – and the Great Vacation – will gather strength after the Australian summer and peak around Easter 2022, as a new report reveals almost 40 per cent of workers are itching for a change.

The PwC Australia survey released on Saturday found 38 per cent of employees want a new job in the next 12 months, with 73 per cent of employers already worried about staff shortages.

The expected churn in staff is encouraging some companies to detail policies for employees who are keen to travel overseas to see family and friends or for tourism.

ELMO Software, for example, has responded to the push for the Great Vacation with a policy allowing its staff to spend up to six weeks overseas mixing annual leave and remote work. The Australian HR Institute is also developing a policy which it will push out to its members soon in a bid to retain staff by allowing them to work overseas rather than resigning.

Job mobility dropped significantly last year as lockeddown employees opted to stay with their companies and weather the Covid-19 storm, but closed borders and an end to permanent and temporary immigration led to severe shortages in some areas such as technology, pharmaceuticals and health, as well as agriculture.

Younger workers who would previously have travelled overseas to develop their careers have been stuck in Australia for almost two years. The end result was that staff turnover, or job mobility, was the lowest on record in 2020, with just 7.5 per cent, or 975,000 of employed people changing jobs – although professionals were much higher at 21 per cent.

PwC Australia’s Ben Hamer, who leads the firm’s Future of Work practice, said staff turnover in 2019 was around 11 per cent.

He expects turnover to be much higher next year: “It’s not like every single one of those (38 per cent of people) is going to act on leaving their employers, but it is gong to be much higher than in the past,” he said. “The balance of power has shifted from the employer to the employee. Competition for talent will intensify and those who fail to adapt will take a big hit.”

He says the Great Resignation will be in “full swing by March driven by market stability, increased consumer confidence, the likely softening of interstate borders”.

Robert Walters NSW managing director Andrew Hanson said his firm was talking to employers who were planning for the worst early next year. “I think we will see a lot of candidates coming to us saying that they want to go to London and New York,” he says. “So we might see a brain drain.”